Joanna Godden eBook

“Well, anyhow we’ll go as far as the Commissioners.
If I were you, I shouldn’t apply for total exemption,
but for a rebate. We might do something with
allowances. Let me see, what did you sell for?"...

He finally prepared an involved case, partly depending
on the death duties that had already been paid when
Joanna inherited Alce’s farm, and which he said
ought to be considered in calculating increment value.
Joanna would not have confessed for worlds that she
did not understand the grounds of her appeal, though
she wished Edward Huxtable would let her make at least
some reference to her steam tractor, and thus win her
victory on moral grounds, instead of just through some
lawyer’s mess. But, moral appeal or lawyer’s
mess, her case should go to the Commissioners, and
if necessary to the High Court. Just because she
knew that in her own home and parish the fighting
spirit was failing her, Joanna resolved to fight this
battle outside it without counting the cost.

Sec.8

That autumn she had her first twinge of rheumatism.
The days of the marsh ague were over, but the dread
“rheumatiz” still twisted comparatively
young bones. Joanna had escaped till a later age
than many, for her work lay mostly in dry kitchens
and bricked yards, and she had had little personal
contact with the soil, that odorous sponge of the
marsh earth, rank with the soakings of sea-fogs and
land-fogs.

Like most healthy people, she made a tremendous fuss
once she was laid up. Mene Tekel and Mrs. Tolhurst
were kept flying up and down stairs with hot bricks
and poultices and that particularly noxious brew of
camomile tea which she looked upon as the cure of every
ill. Ellen would come now and then and sit on
her bed, and wander round the room playing with Joanna’s
ornaments—­she wore a little satisfied smile
on her face, and about her was a queer air of restlessness
and contentment which baffled and annoyed her sister.

The officers from Lydd did not now come so often to
Ansdore. Ellen’s most constant visitor
at this time was the son of the people who had taken
Great Ansdore dwelling-house. Tip Ernley had just
come back from Australia; he did not like colonial
life and was looking round for something to do at
home. He was a county cricketer, an exceedingly
nice-looking young man, and his people were a good
sort of people, an old West Sussex family fallen into
straightened circumstances.

On his account Joanna came downstairs sooner than
she ought. She could not get rid of her distrust
of Ellen, the conviction that once her sister was
left to herself she would be up to all sorts of mischief.
Ellen had behaved impossibly once and therefore, according
to Joanna, there was no guarantee that she would not
go on behaving impossibly to the end of time.
So she came down to play the dragon to Tip Ernley as
she had played the dragon to the young lieutenants
of the summer. There was not much for her to
do—­she saw at once that the boy was different
from the officers, a simple-minded creature, strong,
gentle and clean-living, with deferential eyes and
manners. Joanna liked him at first sight, and
relented. They had tea together, and a game of
three-handed bridge afterwards—­Ellen had
taught her sister to play bridge.